‘What did they say?’ asked Henry, leading her back into the living-room with the pot of coffee on a tray.
‘Nothing very extraordinary, but they confirm, if they are genuine, that Jesus and John the Baptist actually existed.’
‘Are they genuine?’
She sat down. ‘Who knows? You see, there were already two passages of the same kind in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, which some scholars thought had been inserted by pious monks in the Middle Ages. So the same was said of these Slavonic additions to his Jewish War. But the evidence that they are genuine is strong. They are very much in the style of Josephus, and they mention both Jesus and John from the standpoint of a sceptic.’
‘Perhaps they were just being cunning?’
‘Sure. But the only reason for doing that would be to prove that Jesus and John had existed which, at that time, no one doubted.’
‘Then why,’ asked Henry, ‘were there no similar passages in the Greek version of The Jewish War?’
‘That is easier to explain. By the time Josephus wrote his second edition, under the Emperor Domitian, the Christians were regarded as enemies of the state. It would have been crazy of Josephus, still living on an imperial pension, to refer to the founder of their religion as a miracle-worker and demigod who was executed unjustly by a Roman official for a bribe.’
‘But what has all this to do with the death of Father Lambert?’ asked Henry, handing her a cup of coffee.
‘Wait. I’ll tell you,’ said Anna, first taking a sip of her coffee. ‘This German scholar, Alexander Berendts, who had pieced together the Slavonic edition of Josephus from several different manuscripts, published his preliminary findings in 1911, but his work was not complete when he died the following year. He had got hold of bits of manuscript from monasteries and museums in Russia, and after his death his work was continued by a colleague called Konrad Grass. The First World War put a stop to Grass’ researches. Then came the Russian revolution, the German invasion of the Baltic states, and the loss of some of the old Slavonic texts – in particular, a certain Codex 109 in which parts of Josephus’ Jewish War were mixed with bits of the Gospels and various apocrypha. This Codex was thought to have been taken by the retreating Russians to the public library in Leningrad, and supposedly lost in the fire of 1919.
‘Three or four years ago, it was discovered in Lithuania – or, more exactly, it turned up among other manuscripts given to the State Library in Vilnius by some Orthodox monks. A woman working at the library who knew old Slavonic noticed almost at once that this Codex differed in one small way from the others from which Berendts’ translation of the Slavonic version had been made. There was, as it were, an “addition to the additions”, to the sixth, which dealt with the rending of the veil in the Temple.’
‘What did it say?’ asked Henry.
‘You can read it yourself.’ She took the photocopy of the article from her bag. ‘This is a translation of the article by Miss N. Vesoulis which was published in a Soviet archaeological review. It was Father Lambert who first showed it to me.’
‘Must I read it all?’
‘No. Just the passage from Josephus. The words in italics are those found in the new Codex.’
Henry took the article and read the text under the title ‘The Rending of the Veil’:
In the days of our pious fathers this curtain was intact, but in our own generation it was a sorry sight, for it had been suddenly rent from top to bottom at the time when by bribery they had secured the execution of the benefactor of men – the one who by his actions had proved that he was no mere man. Many other awe-inspiring ‘signs’ happened at the same moment. It is also stated that after his execution and entombment he disappeared entirely. Some people actually assert that he had risen; others that his friends stole him away: and others still that Pilate himself had his body taken from the tomb in a jar and then hidden in a cistern under the Antonia. I for one cannot decide where the truth lies. A dead man cannot rise by his own power; but he might rise if aided by the prayer of another righteous man. Again, if an angel or other heavenly being, or God himself, takes human form to fulfil his purpose, and after living among men dies and is buried, he can rise again at will. Moreover it is stated that he could not have been stolen away, as guards were posted around his tomb, 30 Romans and 1,000 Jews.
When Henry had finished reading this he looked up at Anna. ‘And your father has really found the body of a crucified man in a jar in a cistern under the Antonia?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Or, to be more precise, under the Haram – the Temple Mount – which at its north-west corner was connected to the Antonia. Two weeks ago they broke through the wall of an old cistern and found this jar containing the skeleton of a crucified man.’
‘From what period?’
‘The first century AD.’
‘But thousands were crucified at that time.’
‘Of course. But on the skull of this skeleton are marks consistent with a crown of thorns, and between the ribs on the right side there is the mark made by a sword or a spear.’
‘And they showed all that to Father Lambert?’
‘Yes. And apparently he realized at once that what Josephus had suggested in the Vilnius Codex was true.’
Henry frowned. ‘One would have thought he would wait before jumping to any conclusions.’
Anna frowned, irritated that Henry should seem to doubt the veracity of her father’s momentous find. ‘He didn’t jump to any conclusions. He had the evidence of the find.’
‘It still seems … improbable.’
‘Father Lambert didn’t think so.’
‘No. That’s true. And it explains his suicide.’
‘Or his murder.’
‘How … his murder?’
‘He was going to announce the find at the Congress.’
‘Why him? Why not your father?’
‘They thought it should come from a Catholic.’
‘Of course.’
‘But Jake thinks that some of his fellow Catholics may have got wind of what was going on, and may have killed him to shut him up.’
Henry put down his empty cup on the tray. ‘Killing Father Lambert could hardly prevent the find from becoming known.’
‘No, but it would make it less likely that people would believe it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if Dad or any other Jew breaks the news to the world, then everyone is going to say that it’s a forgery.’
‘Why should your father pretend to dig up the body of Christ?’
She shrugged. ‘To get at the Christians, I guess.’
‘So they called in Father Lambert, who was not just a distinguished archaeologist but a Catholic priest of a most conservative kind?’
‘Exactly. And now that he’s dead, they want me to ask Andrew who they can ask in his place.’
‘Wouldn’t your father know better than Andrew?’
‘About the archaeology, yes, but not about the theology.’
Henry smiled. ‘No, of course. It would be no use asking a liberal theologian.’
‘Why not?’
‘They don’t believe in the empty tomb. But Andrew does, so you must be careful how you break it to him.’
‘Sure. That’s what I wanted to ask you. How do you think I should tell him?’
‘Try and seem a little less pleased.’
She blushed. ‘I’m not pleased, I mean, not that it’s Jesus, but you’ve got to agree that it’s great for Dad.’
‘It’ll certainly make his name,’ said Henry, offering Anna more coffee.
‘It’s very hard for me to imagine,’ said Anna, holding out her cup, ‘how the news will affect someone who really believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead.’
‘It’ll be painful.’
‘I’m also afraid that he’ll hate me for telling him – whether he believes it or not.’
‘No one likes the bringer of bad news.’
‘And I know that he’ll t
hink I’m pleased because I’m a Jew, even though I couldn’t care less about being a Jew and that it’s only because of Dad that I’m a little excited.’
‘Would you like me to tell him?’
‘Then he might hate you, and he’ll think you’re pleased because you’ve always said it was nonsense.’
‘I hope it would take more than that to turn Andrew against me.’
‘You mean he’d take it from you but not from me?’
‘I’ve known him longer.’
‘But if I leave it to you, he’ll know that I’ve ducked out of telling him and he may think that I don’t trust him.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll tell him.’
‘As you like.’
She looked at her watch. ‘He’ll probably be at Huntingdon. I’ll catch him there.’
Eleven
Anna left. Henry returned to his desk. His eyes fell on the columns of print from which he was drawing up an abstract on the regulations governing the import of tinned meats into the United Arab Emirates, but his mind – normally able to concentrate at his command – remained preoccupied with Anna and what she had just told him.
When she had telephoned he had assumed – despite her assurance to the contrary – that she was coming round to try and repair the rupture of the night before. How many times had his girlfriends contrived to reappear in a sexy dress or with their hair done in a different way, as if the glimpse of a breast or a cascade of tinted curls could reanimate a dead affection? In reality, the very crudity of their assault upon his senses only exacerbated the revulsion he felt for the body which had once inspired desire.
As soon as she had entered his flat, Henry had known that his assumption was wrong. Not only had she taken no trouble with her appearance, but she hardly looked him in the eye – and when she did, it was not with any lingering innuendo, but with a strange, mixed look of anxiety and triumph. He wondered whether perhaps she thought she had done something which might impress him, but, again, as she had told him about her father’s find, she showed none of the conceit which girls sometimes feel because of their father’s celebrity or their family’s distinction.
She was excited, of course, and proud on her father’s behalf; and, undoubtedly, it was momentous news if Dagan had discovered the skeleton of Christ and could prove it. There remained enough of a journalist in Henry to be intrigued by such a sensational story. He was also amused by imagining the effect the news would have on the clergy up and down England – the sermons that would be preached, the articles written and the learned correspondence in the columns of The Times. He was anxious, all the same, as Anna had been, about the effect the discovery would have on his brother. However convinced he was that his beliefs were false, and however contemptuous he was of the Catholic Church, he saw the value to Andrew of his religious convictions.
He had always known his brother would discover, sooner or later, that his faith was no more than a means of avoiding unpleasant truths about human nature, but he had hoped he would be eased into this understanding when he was more mature. Andrew might be twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, but the monastic life had protected him from the coarse realities of life. To the monks, his naïveté might be evidence of spiritual strength: to Henry, it was the sign of someone fragile who, upon being obliged to admit that his beliefs were bogus, might retreat into an unsound mind.
Eventually, he forced himself to return to work on the digest of trade regulations. Sometimes he rang his office to check a fact, or answered the telephone when it rang, but he kept the calls short, wanting to leave the line open in case Andrew should want to reach him. Towards six, his head tight from prolonged concentration on facts and figures, and his eyes bleary from gazing at the small points of light on the screen, he longed to leave his flat and go for a walk before it became too dark; but his anxiety about Andrew took precedence over his desire for fresh air, and so he went to the window and leaned out over Eaton Square.
At eight, Henry rang the friends who were expecting him to dinner to say that he could not come. At nine he ordered a pizza to be delivered to his flat. Soon after, Andrew rang, as Henry knew he would, and asked if he could come round at once.
He arrived at the same time as the pizza, his tousled appearance and demented expression contrasting with the neat, bored look of the uniformed delivery boy who stepped aside to let Andrew in. Henry bribed the boy to give him a second pizza from the box on the back of his bike and then took both of them into his living-room with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
Andrew turned as he came in. ‘You can’t imagine what has happened,’ he blurted out at once. ‘Really, things have been said which, well, if anyone else had said them, or they’d been said without my knowing – without my having seen what had happened to Father Lambert – well, if it hadn’t been for that, I would simply have thought them a joke in poor taste, or not even a joke – more a kind of silly science-fiction fantasy …’
Henry sat down with the wine and the pizzas, wondering at first how convincing he could make his pretence that he had not already heard what Andrew was telling him. Then he saw that his brother was oblivious to his reactions – gazing wildly into mid-air and talking in an unusually loud voice, not as if addressing an audience but as if he wished to shout down some other voices which were attempting to interrupt him.
‘You see, everything which is incredible in itself is proof of the next incredible thing which in turn proves another until you have a complex circle of facts which are established, which cannot be discounted, at least not by me who saw with my own eyes his dead body and heard with my own ears the confession of Mrs Dunn.’
‘What have you learned now?’ asked Henry.
‘It seems – it will seem absurd to you if I tell you just like this, but there’s no other way – it seems that Father Lambert killed himself because he saw the body of Our Lord – a skeleton, I mean, which he believed to be that of Our Lord, not just because it had a nail through the feet and the marks of thorns on the skull, and a spear between the ribs, but because it was found in a storage jar just like that described by Josephus in the old Slavonic version of his Jewish War.’
Henry was ready to ask for more details of this revelation, as he would naturally have done if he had not known them already, but again it was quite clear that Andrew was beyond suspicions of any kind, so Henry simply allowed him to continue talking.
‘Of course, no one thought the new addition particularly significant at the time. I remember Father Lambert mentioning it, and I think he referred me to the articles which described it, but I never read them because it never occurred to anyone that the body of a crucified man would be found in a jar in a cistern. But now it has been found, and it seems quite plausible that Josephus should have known because he had access to all the imperial records in Rome, and it is accepted that procurators like Pilate reported what they were doing in great detail. If it existed, he would certainly have seen a copy of the Acta Pilati – he might even have known old men who had served under Pilate in Palestine as young officers in the Roman army.’
‘But Josephus mentioned other possibilities,’ said Henry, ‘even that Christ did rise from the dead.’
‘Yes, I know, which is why until now it occurred to no one to take this new addition seriously. But if they have found a skeleton with those marks in a cistern just like the one described by Josephus – well, it is very hard to know what to think. And I have been thinking very hard of how it could not be the body of Our Lord, but just that of an ordinary criminal. But why would an ordinary criminal have been buried in such an obscure place?’
‘Both could be forgeries.’
Andrew frowned. ‘But how?’ That would presuppose collusion between Professor Dagan and Russian Orthodox monks in Lithuania; and even if that is theoretically possible, it is extremely improbable to anyone who knows Professor Dagan.’
‘That is presumably why Father Lambert accepted it.’
‘Do you feel that?’
Andrew laughed. ‘I haven’t really had time to be affected one way or the other. Anna gave me the news at Huntingdon. Then we rang her father again in Jerusalem. He couldn’t say much over the telephone, but he seemed very upset about Father Lambert, and is in something of a quandary about his find. Naturally, the archaeologist in him is very excited – one can hardly blame him for that – but the death of Father Lambert, whether it was murder or suicide …’
‘Doesn’t this prove it was suicide?’
‘Jake apparently thinks he may have been murdered by some Jesuit, but that’s very improbable. Anyway, whether he killed himself or was murdered, he was the first Christian to be told. Michal Dagan is, quite naturally, alarmed by what will happen when it is announced to the world. He even wonders whether it should be told, and has asked me to advise him.’
‘What did you suggest?’
‘How could I advise him? I’m not even a priest. I asked him, instead, if I could tell my superior.’
‘Did he agree?’
‘In the end, yes. So I went back to the monastery and told Father Godfrey. At first, he thought it was a joke, but he too had to face the fact of Father Lambert’s death and all that it implied, so he thought for a moment and then said, as I had said, that he couldn’t decide what should or should not be done, and that he would have to consult the Papal Nuncio or Cardinal Hume, and he picked up the telephone to ring one or the other. Then he realized how absurd it would sound to say, tout court, that some Israelis had dug up the body of Christ, particularly since the only thing which made us take it seriously was that Father Lambert, whom we knew, had taken it seriously enough to hang himself, but neither Cardinal Hume nor the Nuncio knew that Father Lambert had hanged himself because Father Godfrey had announced that he had died of a stroke and was reluctant now to change his story.’
On the Third Day Page 11